Zero
by DeadNotSleeping2048
Summary: Set sometime after Allegiant, massive spoilers for the ending so don't read if you haven't read it. Tobias faces his Fear Landscape and is surprised by the results. There has never been someone truly fearless before. How did he conquer his fears?


**Zero**

After everything that had happened, Tobias moved back to his apartment in Dauntless. He found the familiarity comforting, the whole faction felt like Tris. He also liked the fact that everything was black. It felt like the whole world was in mourning. He knew this wasn't true; pretty much everybody else was still out getting drunk celebrating that it was over. The only ones who weren't were Zeke, Christina, Caleb and himself.

He felt so lonely. He couldn't talk to Zeke without feeling the guilt of Uriah's death weighing him down, Christina was refusing to leave her apartment and every time he saw Caleb he had to restrain himself from killing him. The only thing that was stopping him was that it would have made her sacrifice meaningless. Tris had given her life for her brother and that's what he had to come to accept.

He'd fallen back into his routine before he met Tris. He would glare at anybody who spoke to him and avoided contact with others unless it was absolutely necessary. Before she'd joined, he'd been planning to join the factionless, but she brought the magic back to Dauntless. She changed it back to what it was supposed to be; somewhere that valued bravery rather than stupidity. Now it was just empty.

It took him a month to build up the courage to go back to his Fear Landscape. He knew where the reserves of simulation serum were stored and liberated a few doses, just in case somebody else decided to move them. He took a deep breath and entered the dark room. His hands were shaking as he injected the serum into his neck; he was remembering when he had taken Tris to see his fears. Now he had to face them alone again.

As the serum entered his bloodstream, everything went black. He opened his eyes and frowned in confusion. Instead of being on the Hancock building, like he'd expected, he was standing in the Fear Landscape room. Nothing had happened. The serum wasn't working.

He tried again. Still nothing. He didn't expect anybody to have taken the Fear Landscape room offline. Nobody had even mentioned it in months. He knew he'd have to talk to somebody about it, ask them why it wasn't working.

"Christina." He called. She was conveniently walking past the room. She had taken to spending time in her Fear Landscape since the end of the war, maybe she'd know what was happening. He knew that although she wouldn't admit it, she kept going through it so she could see the people that she'd lost. "What's wrong with the Fear Landscape?" He asked as she walked in to the darkened room.

"What do you mean? It worked fine for me."

"I tried three times and nothing happened. Everything just went black, then I opened my eyes and I was standing in here."

"That's impossible. Unless..."

"Unless what."

"You're fearless."

"That can't be true." Yes, he'd faced his fear of heights when scattering Tris' ashes and he was no longer afraid of his father. But his fear of confinement should still be there, and he should be even more scared of killing the innocent, having experienced it firsthand. There was no way this could be happening.

"How did you do it?"

A sudden shock of realisation hit him as she asked. Christina was right, he was fearless. And he knew exactly how it had happened.

"Why should I be afraid? I have nothing left to lose."

He didn't leave his apartment for weeks after that. His friends were becoming worried. Even Zeke thought that they needed to do something to help. Tobias had been like this after Tris' death, but he'd improved after they scattered her ashes. Now he was even worse than before.

Word had spread about the first person ever to be officially fearless. Christina had recently told Zeke what had happened in the Fear Landscape room and he knew that they had to intervene before Tobias got any worse, if that was even possible. He decided that they couldn't wait any longer and visited his friend while the rest of Dauntless were at breakfast. He knew that Tobias would be in his apartment, the only times he ate were when wither his mother or Christina practically force-fed him.

"Four. " He called as he knocked on the door. "Come on, I know you're in there. You haven't left in weeks. People are getting worried."

There was no reply.

"I'm not leaving until you open this door."

There was a rustling noise and then the door swung open sharply. The apartment was dark, with all of the lights turned off. Even then Zeke could see that it was a complete mess inside. Furniture was scattered all over the place and the floor was covered in dirty clothes and broken bits of glass bottles which had obviously been thrown at walls, staining them with the remnants of their alcoholic contents. The man in the doorway looked unhealthy.

He had lost a lot of weight, evident in the sharp angles of his face and the way his clothes hung from him. His face was pale apart from the deep bruises under his eyes from months of sleepless nights.

"You can't live like this. I won't let you anymore. We're friends, Four, I am here to support you."

"You shouldn't call me that."

"Four?"

Tobias laughed bitterly. "Technically I should be called Zero. It's funny isn't it. To everyone else it seems amazing. To me, it just confirms what I already knew. Without her, I am nothing."


End file.
